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Realme’s X2 Pro has a 90Hz screen and Snapdragon 855 Plus for under $400

By Kenneth Kwok
on Tue, 10/15/2019 - 07:26

From The Verge: Realme has made a major splash in 2019 with a series of impressively low-priced devices, but now the company is releasing its first phone that could seriously be described as high-end. The X2 Pro has Qualcomm’s fastest processor available, a screen with a high refresh rate, and a quad-camera array including a giant 64-megapixel sensor. All of this means it’s Realme’s priciest phone to date, but the spec sheet keeps it extremely competitive.

The X2 Pro’s industrial design is pretty boring, but there’s nothing really wrong with it either. There’s an unobtrusive waterdrop notch in the display, along with a bottom bezel that’s only very slightly larger than the other three. Realme has moved to a glass back panel for the X2 Pro, which feels better to the touch than the previous plastic designs but obviously compromises on durability.

Despite the small bezels, the X2 Pro manages to squeeze in stereo speakers that actually sound quite good; taken together with the above-average haptic feedback system, it’s clear Realme has made a point of including features that more expensive Chinese phones often skimp on. Unfortunately, though, that doesn’t extend to wireless charging.

The screen is a 6.5-inch 1080p OLED panel with an in-display fingerprint sensor and a refresh rate of 90Hz. Higher refresh rates are starting to become more common on flagship phones like the OnePlus 7T and (reportedly) the upcoming Pixel 4, and it really is hard to go back once you’ve been using a screen like this for a while. The Realme X2 Pro feels incredibly smooth in use, especially for basic actions like scrolling through timelines or swiping between home screen pages, where text remains readable in motion.

The speedy feel of the phone is bolstered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 Plus processor, the fastest currently available on any Android phone. The X2 Pro comes with either 6GB, 8GB, or 12GB of RAM and 64GB, 128GB, or 256GB of flash storage.